A Long Way Home
Copyright© 2026 by Asa Strong
Chapter 8
The whine of the jet engines did nothing to quell the uneasiness I felt in my stomach. The phone call from my father, with the news that my mother had died in an automobile accident, had really shaken me.
As I sat there, twenty thousand feet above the semi-featureless plains below, I thought back over the past months. I had eventually gotten around to calling my parents and letting them know where I was at. After the call was over, I felt a little guilty about not letting them know sooner, but I had first been so focused on building the house that it didn’t even enter my mind to contact them. Afterward, I had gotten so wrapped up with furnishing the place that calling them completely slipped my mind. I had never really been close to my mother, but it bothered me that our last meeting was concluded on less than amiable terms. Maybe that was why hearing of her death affected me so much.
The flight had a layover in Chicago, and I took the opportunity to call my dad and let him know I was on my way. From the sound of his voice, I could tell he was having a hard time dealing with my mother’s death. I assured him I’d be there as soon as possible; at this point, that was all I could do.
The plane landed in Charlotte around noon, and I quickly made way to the rental car counter. I was on the road shortly thereafter and reached home a little after three in the afternoon.
When I entered the house, Dad was sitting on the couch with my Uncle Wade next to him. He looked like he hadn’t slept or changed clothes in a couple of days. His hair was uncombed, and it was apparent he hadn’t shaved in a few days.
“Hi Hoyt,” he said in a small, tinny voice.
“How are you doing, Dad?”
“I don’t know; everything is going wrong.” He replied, and then broke down crying.
I didn’t know what to do, and felt very uncomfortable. My father and I had never been what you would call close, and he certainly was not a “touchy-feely” type of man. I finally decided to put my suitcase in my old room and try to figure out where to go from here. From his remarks, there was more going on than just my mother’s death.
“I’m going to put my suitcase away, I’ll be right back.” I announced, and then headed for my bedroom.
After I returned from stowing my suitcase, my uncle excused himself, saying he had to get back to work. My father looked like he had some semblance of control back, so I fixed a pot of coffee and asked him to come to the kitchen, where we could talk.
It took a while, but I finally got him to open up. He slowly, with much prodding on my part, told me what was going on. It seems that for the past four or five years, the investments he had made had turned sour. He had mortgaged the house to the hilt and used all of his available cash to try and cover his losses, but it was turning worse by the day. He was now in a position of owing five hundred thousand dollars and had no way of coming up with the cash. He also told me that was why he was so upset at Uncle Cecil’s will. He had been hoping that he would have been left enough to cover his debts.
In my mind, this explained his actions the day Uncle Cecil’s will was read. When I asked him how come he didn’t tell me, his answer was that my mother wasn’t aware of the situation, and he was afraid of her reaction.
The long and the short of it was that he was broke. He essentially didn’t have a dime to his name and was heavily in debt. I sat there stunned throughout the whole conversation. Finally, I realized that there were immediate problems that needed solving, and I would have to take care of them first.
I managed to get Dad to take a shower and get himself cleaned up so we could make arrangements at the funeral home.
The funeral was well attended, and as was the custom in my mother’s family, she was buried in the family plot in Raleigh. After the graveside ceremony, all hell broke loose. We had retreated to my grandfather’s house, and when my mother’s will was read, she had left everything to one of her favorite charities. This was not a lot of money we’re talking about, but the fact that she didn’t include my father set him off. He totally lost it, and in the ensuing harsh words between him and my grandfather, the whole story of my father’s financial situation came out.
To this day, I don’t know why my grandfather acted the way he did. His daughter was dead, and he really had no obligation to my father. Why he chose to berate and belittle him incensed me. I tore into him for sticking his nose into business that was not his and used every bit of offensive language I’d learned over the years. He was literally foaming at the mouth when we left.
During the next two weeks, I took care of my father’s business. I paid the funeral charges and called Aaron in Akron for advice on how to clean up his investment debts. Eventually, I shipped dad’s entire paperwork mess off to him with instructions to negotiate the best deal he could, to get my dad out of the hole he had dug for himself.
The big problem was the house. I could easily afford to pay it off, but my dad was a beaten man. Since we had returned from the fiasco at my grandfather’s, he had taken no interest in life. It was like he was unaware of anything going on around him. He obviously could not stay here by himself.
I really had no choice but to take him back to Colorado with me. When I explained what I wanted to do, he sat there in silence and accepted my decision without comment.
It took another two weeks to close up all the loose ends one has when moving to a new location. It was the middle of December by the time we left Charlotte, bound for Denver. Once I had figured out I was going to be gone for longer than I had hoped for, I called Dwight and asked if there was any way he could pick up my truck at the Denver airport. Of course, being Dwight, he had no problem. He and JR made the trip that weekend and picked up the truck. JR also agreed to stay at my place until I returned.
My dad and I caught an early morning flight out of Charlotte and, with a stop in Chicago, arrived a little after eleven in the morning. JR met us in the luggage retrieval area and by noon we were headed east in my truck on I-70.